Archive for June, 2014

In a tragic tale of family breakdown spanning three generations, a family judge has opened the way for a baby girl’s adoption after ruling that neither her parents nor her grandparents can give her ‘good enough’ parenting.
The girl’s mother had endured a desperately troubled childhood and had a history of extreme and self-destructive behaviour. Her father was in prison and had convictions for violence and sexual assault on an adult woman. Neither parent sought to keep the child (T) but the baby’s maternal grandparents put themselves forward as potential carers in an attempt to keep her within her natural family.
The grandparents claimed that a social worker had painted an unfairly negative picture of their caring abilities and that the local authority had been ‘intent upon adoption from the outset’. However, the judge said that neither the social worker nor ...

A multiple sclerosis sufferer who was hit with a crushing capital gains tax (CGT) bill after the sale of land from which her husband’s business traded will be more than £145,000 better off following a First-tier Tribunal (FTT) ruling.
The woman had run a petrol station, post office and convenience store in partnership with her husband until she was struck by her debilitating illness. By the time the property was sold for £1.6 million, she had ‘washed her hands’ of the business, which had continued under the management of her husband.
HM Revenue and Customs took the view that she had a beneficial interest in the property and sought to levy £145,430 in CGT on a chargeable gain of more than £420,000. It was pointed out that the property was in the couple’s joint names and that the woman had signed ...

In a landmark decision which balanced the welfare of children against the privacy rights of individuals, the High Court has ordered the Metropolitan Police to hand over DNA profiles gleaned from a crime scene – so that it can be determined once and for all whether a convicted murderer is the father of his victim’s children.
The murderer had slaughtered the children’s mother in a bloody attack and had tried to slash his own wrists with a knife. Despite insisting that he is the father of his victim’s orphaned children, the life sentence prisoner had refused to take a paternity test, leaving them in emotional limbo.
The children’s guardian had applied to the Court for an order requiring police to hand over DNA profiles – extracted from blood found at the scene of the murder – so that the truth or ...

A manipulative mother who did all in her power to turn her eight-year-old daughter against her father has herself been condemned as a child abuser by the Court of Appeal. The woman paid the price for her false accusations when the Court ruled that her little girl had rightly been taken from her by social services and placed in foster care.
Following the break-up of her relationship with the father, the mother had accused him of sexually inappropriate behaviour towards their daughter. She had done everything she could to poison her daughter’s mind against him even though the youngster ‘delighted’ in the time that she spent with him.
Following a fact finding hearing, a family judge had dismissed each and every one of her accusations, describing her as a ‘worryingly obsessed’ woman who had come to ‘believe her own propaganda’. He ...